Israel Is the Big Winner in the Arab Spring. By Walter Russell Mead.

And the Biggest Winner in the Arab Spring Is . . . Israel. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 12, 2013.

Mead:

Israel plans to restructure its military with an eye on new threats and fading risks from neighbors like Syria and Egypt, the WSJ reports:

Israel’s military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and artillery to focus on countering threats from guerrilla warfare and to boost its technological prowess, in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come. . . .

 

The army plans to cut thousands of career officers, shut ground-force units, eliminate air-force squadrons, and decommission naval ships over a period of five years, said an Israeli army spokesman who declined to provide more details….

 

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in public remarks that the army plans to be less dependent on heavy armaments. “In another few years we will see a different” Israel Defense Forces, he said. “Wars of military versus military—in the format we last met 40 years ago, in the Yom Kippur War—are becoming less and less relevant.”

This “sea change” will increase Israel’s qualitative superiority. In the 21st century more than ever before, technology is becoming the most important element of military power, not how many 18 year olds can you deploy. That’s a big advantage for high-tech, low-population countries like Israel.

 

Here’s a related thought: Secretary Kerry’s peace mission to Israel and Palestine is in part based on the calculation that uncertainty and concerns about the consequences of the Arab Spring for regional security (especially the consequences of a more active Hezbollah) make Israel more amenable to US pressure and suggestions. But this WSJ piece suggests a different calculation: Israel’s defense establishment may actually feel that the effective destruction of the Syrian Army, the internal struggles in Iraq, and the preoccupation with domestic order in Egypt have neutralized the military power of Israel’s neighbors.

 

If so, Kerry may find it harder to trade US reassurances for Israeli concessions than he expected.